THE EUCLID OPERATIONS CONCEPT AND GROUND SEGMENT DESIGN - STATUS AND CHALLENGES
- Paper number
IAC-15,B6,2,10,x30279
- Author
Mr. Andreas Rudolph, European Space Agency (ESA), Germany
- Year
2015
- Abstract
Euclid is an European Space Agency's (ESA) medium class science mission of ESA’s Science Programme currently under development and is due to be launched in 2020 on a Soyuz-Fregat from Kourou, French Guyana. Euclid is a space-based optical/near-infrared survey mission designed to investigate the nature of dark energy, dark matter and gravity by observing their signatures on the geometry of the Universe and on the formation of large structures over cosmological timescales. Euclid will use two main techniques in the detection of the signature of dark matter and energy: Weak gravitational Lensing, which requires the measurement of the shape and photometric redshifts of distant galaxies, and Galaxy Clustering, based on the measurement of the 3-dimensional distribution of galaxies through their spectroscopic redshifts. To achieve its scientific objectives the spacecraft is planned to perform a survey of more than 35% of the sky during its 6 years nominal mission at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point #2 similar to previous astronomy missions such as Herschel, Planck and Gaia. Specific challenges for Euclid include the very demanding image quality and survey requirements, which have an impact on the Attitude and Orbit Control system and its operations, and the (for a science mission) unprecedented data volume and rate requirements with a daily data downlink volume of some 850 Gbit of compressed science data, which have to be downlinked, processed and distributed within the ground segment. This paper will provide a brief overview of the Euclid mission, its science objectives and the mission and spacecraft design. It will then describe the ground segment architecture which needs to provide the solutions to some of the operational challenges of Euclid and which features many novelties (ka-band, CFDP, file based operations, etc) to implement the ground segment and allow for cost efficient operations.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)